Reconfigurable deployable polyhedral mechanism based on extended parallelogram mechanism

This paper dealt with the construction of a novel class of reconfigurable deployable polyhedral mechanisms (RDPMs). A parallelograms mechanism was designed by considering layers of links and size of revolute joints, and extended parallelogram mechanisms (EPaM) were constructed for the first time by inserting angulated elements and scissor-like elements into the parallelogram mechanism. The detailed parameters and magnification ratios of two kinds of EPaMs were calculated. A method was then proposed for constructing RDPMs based on EPaMs. The proposed method can provide more modular linkages for RDPMs, and all polyhedra constituted by regular polygons can be used to construct RDPMs. The obtained RDPMs can be reassembled by increasing or decreasing the number of basic elements to change the sizes beyond their deployment capacity. A prototype of reconfigurable deployable hexahedral mechanism based on EPaMs was fabricated to verify the feasibility of this class of RDPMs, and three reconfigurable deployable hexahedral mechanisms in three sizes based on the prototype were reassembled and tested.